Mailing services suspend accounts when a send produces many bounces or spam complaints, because one bad list hurts delivery for every customer. Answer the review honestly, set the old addresses aside, and rebuild the list through sign-ups.

Suspended the morning after

A business owner finally starts a newsletter. She exports every address from the office email program, imports them into a mailing service, and sends a spring offer before going home.

The next morning the account is suspended. A message says the campaign triggered a review, and nothing more can be sent until it is resolved.

It feels like an accusation, though nobody meant any harm. The service is doing what it has to, and the review can usually be answered.

Why mailing services watch every send

A mailing service sends for thousands of customers from a shared set of servers. Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and company mail servers all judge incoming mail partly by the reputation of the server it came from.

When one customer's send produces a burst of bounces and complaints, that reputation drops, and mail from every other customer on those servers starts landing in junk folders.

So services watch each campaign as it goes out. A send that crosses their limits pauses the account automatically, and a person then looks at what happened.

What triggers a review

Each service sets its own limits and rarely publishes them. The usual triggers are these:

An old address book can hit all five at once. It holds people who changed jobs years ago, people who wrote once and forgot, and addresses never meant for newsletters.

An address book is not a mailing list

An email program adds an address to its contacts whenever someone writes or is written to. Over years that includes suppliers, couriers, automated notices and people who asked a single question.

None of them asked for a newsletter. Some will not recognise the business's name in their inbox, and the spam button is the quickest way to make an unfamiliar message disappear.

A mailing list is different: everyone on it chose to be there, recently enough to remember doing so.

A worked example

A video transfer service in a suburban shopping plaza converts camcorder tapes, film reels and slides to DVDs and digital files. Most customers come once with a box of family tapes, and return years later with more.

For a Mother's Day offer, the owner imported nine years of addresses from the shop's email program. The account was suspended before the send had finished.

The review showed why. Many addresses bounced, some people who had used the shop once marked the offer as spam, and the list included suppliers and the shop's own courier.

The owner answered plainly: where the addresses came from, that it was a first send, and what would change.

With the service's agreement, only customers who had ordered in the last two years were kept, with a first message explaining who the shop is.

New sign-ups come from a box on the order form and the website, each confirmed by email.

Every address now belongs to someone who dealt with the shop recently or asked to hear from it, which is the kind of list a service's checks are built to let through.

Answering the review

Most services send a form or a list of questions. Answer them exactly: how the addresses were collected, over what period, what people were told, and when they last heard from you.

Do not argue that the list is fine. Say what went wrong and what will change, such as setting old addresses aside and collecting new ones through a confirmed sign-up.

Some services restore the account on conditions, and some decline that list altogether. Moving the same list to another service only repeats the problem somewhere new.

Building a list that will not trip it again

Collect addresses where people already deal with you: a sign-up box on the website, a checkbox on the order form, and a question at the counter when orders are picked up.

Say what they will receive and how often. Then send a confirmation email they must click, which proves the address works and that the person meant it.

Write to them soon and regularly. A list that hears from you every month remembers you; one left alone for a year starts to behave like an old address book.

Consent and the coming rules

Canada's anti-spam law comes into force on July 1, and it asks for much the same thing: consent you can show, and a working way to unsubscribe in every message.

Recent customers can sometimes be emailed on implied consent for a limited time, but the details matter. Read that as a plain summary, not legal advice on the particular addresses you hold.

Reading the report after each send

Every campaign report shows bounces, complaints and unsubscribes. Read it the day after each send, not only when something goes wrong.

Unsubscribes are healthy: those people leave quietly instead of pressing the spam button. A jump in complaints after one send usually means the message did not match what people signed up for.

The counter-case

A business with a small address book of regulars who know the owner personally may send to it without trouble. They recognise the name and expect to hear from it.

But that address book still holds more than customers, and an hour spent keeping only people who would welcome the message protects the account.

Sending from an ordinary mailbox instead is no answer for a larger list. Mail servers notice many identical messages from one mailbox too, and a mailing service remains the right tool once the list is sound.

Getting back to sending

  1. Read the suspension notice and the service's rules on lists.
  2. Answer the review with where every address came from.
  3. Set the old address book aside rather than mailing it.
  4. Keep recent customers only if the service agrees.
  5. Add sign-up boxes to the website and the order form.
  6. Confirm each sign-up with an email that must be clicked.
  7. Read the report the day after every send.

Step six is what makes the rest hold. A confirmed sign-up proves the address works and the person asked, which is exactly what the service's review was trying to establish.

The unsubscribe link Gmail puts at the top explains why a quiet unsubscribe does a sender far less damage than a spam complaint.

Frequently asked questions

Why did the mailing service suspend my account?

A send produced more bounces or spam complaints than the service allows. Those harm the reputation of servers shared by every customer, so the account pauses for review.

Can my email program's address book be a mailing list?

Not safely. It holds suppliers, automated senders and people who wrote once years ago. None of them asked for a newsletter, and many will bounce or complain.

What should I say in the review?

Exactly where the addresses came from, over what period, what people were told, and what you will change. Admitting the mistake plainly serves you better than defending the list.

What is a spam trap?

An address, often an old abandoned one, that a mail provider watches to catch senders mailing without permission. Mail sent to it marks the sender as careless.

How do I build a list that will not get suspended?

Collect addresses through sign-up boxes and order forms, say what people will receive, confirm each sign-up by email, and then write to them soon and regularly.

Does Canada's anti-spam law affect this?

It comes into force on July 1. It expects consent you can show and a working unsubscribe link in every message, so records of how each address joined matter.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Mailing account suspended after the first send?

Forward the notice and tell us where the addresses came from; we will help you answer it and rebuild the list.

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